Review: "The Machine Stops" Offers a Faithful and Eye-Catching Sci-Fi Adaptation
The Machine Stops Adapted and directed by Kevin Ray Presented by KEVIN RAY | WORKS at the The Mark O'Donnell Theater at the Entertainment Community Fund Arts Center 160 Schermerhorn St, Brooklyn, NYC January 27-February 5, 2023 L to R: Lya Lanne, Rachel Rhea Shannon, Augustus W. Cook II, & John Teresi. Photo by Jonathan Levin. English writer E. M. Forster's (1879-1970) 1909 dystopian science fiction story "The Machine Stops" includes much that now seems prescient, albeit necessarily and interestingly limited by its era: videoconferencing and music or literature at the push of a button make appearances, for instance, but that these or any other technologies could be wireless was clearly still unthinkable. The story may also strike audiences as having gained additional contemporary resonance in how its characters' physical isolation; disinclination to touch one another; and system of, as the narrative puts it, bringing things to people rather than people to thi...